


on the brink of going supernova

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 05:09:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11006652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: He didn’t want her to die.He never had wanted that to be part of the plan.(Or: instead of falling into the obvious trap, Ophelia takes Fitz's offer to start over as long as she left the team alone. He's not sure if that was a mistake or not.)





	on the brink of going supernova

**Author's Note:**

> For the people over on twitter who enabled me.

One second he’s there in the server room, and then next he’s back here again.

The beach house. 

It was supposed to have been their home away from home. Where they would go to escape the city and their work at Hydra. 

In the Framework he had picked the house out himself, having had much more of a taste for sentiment and interior decorating than she ever did. The first place they had that was truly their own. He can still remember how they broke in the couch for the first time, glasses of wine forgotten on the table top, a desperate need to claim what was his and make her feel - 

Feel nothing. 

It had been nothing, an illusion, the Framework. 

That house that he had felt himself transported back to wasn’t real, and this one… 

She’s watching him from a few steps away, still looking as angry and vicious as she had in the server room, but she’s not going back there. Just lingering here, near enough that he could reach out and touch her if he was so inclined to. 

This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. 

There had been a plan, a trap, for the Ghost Rider to take her out once and for all, but he couldn’t - he hadn’t been able to - 

He didn’t want her to die. 

He never had wanted that to be part of the plan. 

Now, he was going to die for that mistake. 

“Ophelia,” he says soft and quiet, careful, just as he had been back there. Afraid to push. He knows all too well exactly what her powers were, after all, he was the one who gave them to her. 

Her voice shakes, anger, emotion - in the Framework she had never had these emotions, tone barely shifting, he had found it strange yet endearing, not realizing at the time that it was because she was AIDA. Now, he can see her emotions, and know how just easily they shift. He pays attention to those minute details when she speaks. “You’re mine now. I choose you, and you choose me.” 

She may be here with him now, watching him, standing together in a house they had called their own in another life, but one instant or one wrong word and she will be back there. 

Fighting the team, going to her death.

He couldn’t -

“I choose you,” he agrees. It’s not a lie. He did. He let her take him away instead of going to her death. “But, Ophelia, I need time, I need -” for the first time in years words struggle to come to his lips, his brain falling him, just at it hand in his time after the pod. “-We’re starting over? From the beginning, because we’re different now, both of us yeah…” 

She doesn’t say anything, but he can see emotions on her face now. She hasn’t learned how to hide them away, so he sees when her anger shifts to some sort of confusion.

He takes that as a sign to keep speaking, to salvage what he can, to protect those left behind. “I want to start over with you, I do. But to do that you need to promise me something.” 

He hardly expects this to be easy, so when she says “Anything,” without any hesitation, he can’t but feel a pang of  _ something  _ in his chest.

“You have to promise not to go back there and hurt my team.”

She weights this. Weights whatever they had in the Framework against the need to destroy others. He can see it, watch as morality is formed, a new human making sense of a vastly complicated world. The part of him that wasn’t worried for his team, wasn’t bracing himself for whatever came next - the  _ scientist  _ part of him was fascinated by her.

For now, he pushes that part of him down. 

Focuses on the here and now. 

In hopes of tipping the scales in his direction he softens his voice, “They have a plan to kill you if you go back there, Ophelia, and I don’t want to lose you.” 

That seems to make the decision easier. He can recall so easily saying similar words before, in the Framework, angry and terrified at the bedside of the woman he had loved waiting for her to wake up,  _ I don’t want to lose you _ .  

“I promise.” 

He breathes, in and out, it is easier now, at least for this moment. 

“Thank you.” 

“Now we can go back to the way we were?”

It’s a question, spoken with such hesitance. 

There’s still so much she is unsure of. How overwhelming it must be to suddenly feel the whole spectrum of human emotions and feelings where before there was only but a few physical sensations. 

Pain, there had been pain before. But otherwise… 

“It’s not that easy… I need time to process this - to process it - it’s all confusing, sorting out the two different lives. Everything can’t just be like it was in the Framework.” 

She nods at that. Slowly, once, then once again. Like a practiced movement. A mimicry of human movement. Before saying, “You’re sleeping on the couch.” 

 

*

 

The line between this world and the other blur in the middle of the night.  

His already damaged brain having a hard enough time keeping one set of memories straight but now there are two sets that conflict each other. Similar enough that sorting through them becomes a difficult process.

Was it his father who had bought him his first car, brand new, fresh from the dealers? Or his mother, calling in a favor from the mechanic down the way for a rusted up old truck?

Who sat next to him on the first day of the Academy, an overly talkative biochemist commenting on their matching sweaters? Or was it the computer scientist with colors in her hair and a smile that seemed poorly practiced? 

When SHIELD fell was he in a bunker, a bottle of champaign passed around, toasts to a future that they were going to make? Or was he firing a gun with shaking hands for the first time in his life?

How did she feel under his hands - when after so long - when for the first time - against the wall of her office  - in their hotel room after a mission - hard and fast - slow and sweet - gasps of pleasure mixed with pain - broken confessions - 

He jerks up from his nearly asleep state.

Gasping, struggling to breathe, it feels like he is drowning all over again and unsure which direction is up. 

He hears the echoes of screams in his ears, the ghost of sensations against his palms, memories of two lives still colliding. Reflexively he moves up into a sitting position, pulling his knees towards his body and he tries to regulate his breathing, to slow his frantic heart, to remember where he is and what is going on, if nothing else. 

“Nightmare?” 

He jerks at the sound of her voice. Heart still beating wildly in his chest, as his eyes dart around the room to find the other person occupying the space.

She’s a few feet away from him, lingering in the doorway between the living space and the hallway to the master bedroom beyond it like a ghostly spectre. 

“Fuck, Ophelia, you can’t just-” he gasps out the words. 

Even in the dark, with only the moonlight shining in through the windows to light the room, he can see his words become a mistake. The way her features twist from concern to anger so quickly. 

Her voice is sharp, angry, not unlike how it had been in the containment pod. “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do!”

Then before he can speak up and say anything else, the room is illuminated by the burst of light and color that comes with her teleporting and she’s gone, the panic only amplifies in her absence.. 

 

*

 

He spends three anxious hours unable to sleep - pacing the floors of a house that is familiar enough to be a  _ home  _ in another life.

When she reappears it is just as quick as when she disappeared, a burst of light in a now well lit room, occupying the same space she had when he woke up. 

He catalogues her appearance looking for the signs of a fight, for blood or fire. Her cheeks are flushed red, flyaways of hair framing her face where the rest of it was pulled into a loose bun, dampness at the edge of her pajama bottoms.Otherwise she looks normal. 

“Tell me that my team is okay, that you didn’t-” 

He can’t even finish the sentence, because in the time of her absence all he could think of was the worst possible scenario. All of his nightmares coming true. All of the regrets burning up inside of him. If anything happened to them it would be his fault: for setting her off, for not going with the plan in the first place, for hanging onto the LMD project when the rest of the team wanted it shut down, for everything from the very beginning.

She doesn’t say anything at first.

A moment too long. 

Enough for his heart to start it’s rapid panic up again and-

“I promised you.” 

A promise.

Yes, he had asked for one, but what did it count for truly? She was human now, could lie as easily as the rest of them, had been taught to by him and Radcliffe and now… 

“I don’t trust you,” he admits. 

“I promised,” she insists again. 

It is easy to snap with the tone he used frequently in the Framework, the tone that demanded answers and not hesitance, the one that had legions of Hydra agents scattering away from him when he wanted to, but always had her meeting his gaze with sudden attention tinged with something more - “Ophelia, answer me!”

Her eyes dart to meet his now, a familiar fire in them, one that would have compelled him into her space in another world. 

Here it just startles him enough to remember who he is, where he is, and how fragile a ground he walks upon - that is until her lips turn up into a half smirk, more natural than the practiced version of this expression she had often worn in the Framework. 

“Ah, there’s my Leopold. I knew I hadn’t lost you yet.” 

 

*

 

He makes a cup of tea in the morning, in a kitchen that is familiar, muscle memory powering him through it. 

It would be easy to fall back into it.

The role, the other life, the other version himself is right there hiding just beneath the surface. 

Especially here in this house - he has an impulse to do a few familiar things, to call up the agents loyal to him and check in on the status at HQ, to work on one of his many pet projects, to press Ophelia up against the kitchen counter top and -

He does not act upon any of those urges. 

That first day he takes his cup of tea and explores the house, the floor plan is set up similar to the one they had before, but lacking all of the familiar ornamentation. The photo of him and his father, their academy graduation papers, framed headlines dictating Hydra victories, a painting that had reminded him of a vague dream from another life, the engagement ring hidden on the bookshelf.

Here now, the walls are bare, the space empty, the elements of life that had been familiar to him in the Framework now missing. 

It wasn’t real.

It hadn’t been real. 

Yet, it feels real to him.

The monster that he had been lurking just beneath the surface, ready to come out again, as it had in the middle of the night when he had demanded answers of her, as it had in the morning when he slipped into a routine with familiar movements. 

It would be so easy to become the man she wanted him to be. 

But he refuses to let himself become that man ever again. 

At least, not entirely. 

 

*

 

He watches her like a scientist. 

Watches as she reacts to each new stimuli. 

Watches her over dinner, delicately trying each thing, avoiding making eye contact with him across the table. 

Watches her standing on the beach from the safety of picture windows, the tide hitting against her ankles. 

Watches her like she watches him.

Both of their heads tilting critically slightly to the side. She must have learned that expression from him. 

Though it is Ophelia that speaks, pointing out what seems to be obvious. “You’re different here.” 

“Yes,” he says, biting back the urge to reply  _ so are you _ .

 

*

 

He has never felt comfortable with the ocean.

Not since the pod. 

Not since he was ready to die down there. 

The water hitting his ankles sends a shock through him each time the fear that if he just keeps walking into the waves that the water will go over his head again, that it will invade his lungs, that his mind and body will quit again. 

There’s another part of him though. 

Another twenty-eight years of memories that find the ocean comforting, that remember laying out on a beach not dissimilar from this one, staring out at an ocean that was always the same consistent shade of comforting blue. 

There was no pod there. 

No falling from a plane. 

No love confessions at the bottom of the sea. 

No drowning. 

No brain damage. 

No hallucinations. 

No feeling like he will never be whole again. 

Nothing.

Ophelia finds him at the beach. 

For once, he’s not bothered by her watching him, instead he feels almost comforted by it the feeling that he is not alone here. He’s never alone anymore. 

He's talking to the waves when he speaks, to the ocean spread out before him, not to the woman that lingers a few steps away from him close enough to have in his arms once more.

“I never did learn how to swim.”

 

*

 

He watches her like someone who remembers who they used to be. 

This isn’t stockholm syndrome, because what he feels for her isn’t love, it's a curiosity, a subtle companionship. 

Starting over.

Though maybe not entirely from the beginning because he still has all those feelings all those memories. 

The way he looks at her sometimes and realizes that in another life he would have died for that woman. 

The way he remembers every second they spent together over the years, hiding away a private part of themselves that only the other can see.

The way he wants to kiss her, just because he used to be able to, just because he wants to feel if her lips are soft and warm and real now instead of -

The way he used to love her.

There are some things which are universal truths. 

Truth: He hesitated when Jemma asked if he wanted Ophelia dead because he never wanted her to die, because he has always believed the best in her. 

Truth: He still remembers what it feels like to love Ophelia, just as he still remember what it feels like to love Jemma. 

Truth: Starting over doesn’t have to be simple to easy, sometimes it’s just standing in a kitchen and saying good morning. 

“I don’t know how you can drink this,” Ophelia says. 

Wrinkling her nose, hands around a steaming and warm coffee mug, looking so  _ normal  _ that he cannot help but wonder how they got here. And where they will go from here.

He may not know what comes next.

May not entirely know what he wants.

But he does know one thing - “Personally, I take mine with cream and sugar.”

 

 


End file.
